Transparency International published its annual corruption perceptions index in 2022, where Sweden obtained the highest measured level of perceived corruption in eleven years. At about the same time, an investigation into corruption and undue influence was discarded by the newly appointed government. The purpose of this thesis is to examine two current political debates about corruption through Norman Faircloughs model for critical discourse analysis. In more detail, the objectives are to study which discourses that can be distinguished, the characteristics of the discursive struggle and which discourse that dominates the Swedish corruption debate. In this thesis, political debates are considered as usable contexts to illustrate both contradiction and consensus regarding the corruption in Sweden. By using critical discourse analysis as an approach, the ambition is to visualize how politicians construct the image of the increased corruption and to examine how certain statements are presented as more evident or true than others. This study shows that there are four discourses that can be distinguished in the two political debates on corruption: privatization, increasing crime rate, accountability and openness and trust. The observed discursive struggle generally has high interdiscursivity, a few cases of intertextuality, and seems to be open to changes. The discourse that dominates the order of discourse is "the increasing crime rate". The results indicate that current societal problems, that are mainly highlighted by the ruling politicians, appear to have an impact on the political discussion about corruption in Sweden.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-96615 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Persson, Ebba |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för samhälls- och kulturvetenskap (from 2013) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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